How our internship works?
 

Our experience as been that no two internships ave looked exactly alike, so below is our general guideline and a starting point for a conversation with people who are interested.

Duration: Generally, we ask for interns to commit to a 2 - 3 month stay on the farm. Shorter than that and the positive impact for Wellspring is diminished because just as an intern has found their feet and are starting to be really helpful, they leave! The first month is a lot  of intense learning that bears fruit in the weeks that follow.

What the intern can expect: We will give you a comfortable space to stay, and will provide one main meal (normally lunch) together with our family each work day. Breakfast and supper will be up to you. Work days (Monday - Friday) start with morning chores, and we work up to 5pm, with a rest period in the middle of each day. Saturday we work till lunch and Sundays we only do the essential chores (milking and animal management).  As an intern you will learn an amazing variety of skills and topics, including:

• • • regenerative agriculture

    • animal care (dairy cows, beef cattle, pastured laying hens,  backyard chickens, ducks, pigs)

    • tractor work

    • lucerne (alfalfa) growing and baling (in summer)

    • fence making and repairs

    • irrigation management and repairs

    • welding, woodwork, chainsaw handling

    • seasonal preserving of fruit and vegetables

    • cheese and yoghurt making

    • animal slaughtering and processing

    • small scale customer relations and deliveries

We promise that you will learn loads, that you will work hard, that you will get dirty, that you will be zapped by electric fences, that you will do things you never imagined you would do and that you will have a ton of fun while doing it! We also encourage our interns, especially those from overseas, to use the farm as a base to explore the surrounding areas and indeed the rest of South Africa. 

What we expect in return: We typically ask interns to make a small financial contribution towards the cost of the food and accomodation (since we typically cannot book it out for guests over that time). This contribution is somewhat dependent on the details of each internship (length of stay, previous agricultural experience etc) and will be agreed to by both parties as party of the application process. We ask for our interns to put in a solid work effort each working day. We expect interns will ask lots of questions,  will admit when they don't know how to do something and ask for help, will make mistakes and own them, and will keep honest communication flowing with us. We do expect interns to respect our leadership on the farm, respect all equipment and animals on the farm and to respect the privacy of our family time and space after work hours are done. 

Internship Application Process: our process for internship applications is relational and organic. Simply fill in the form below and we will make contact with a few basic questions. From there we will set up an online meetup or a farm visit to get to know each other more and discuss specific details of how this may work.